Reaching The Unsaved AND Saved.

How do we bring the truth of God’s radical grace to the to the unsaved AND the saved?

Part 1.

Not only do we as Christian need to reach the lost for Christ but we also need to try to reach the religious with the message of grace. Too many born again believers think that we are extreme in what they like to call “hyper grace” theology. The command from Jesus found in Mark 16 tells each of us to “… Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” and the good news of that gospel is the truth that God no longer is holding our sins against us.

Certainly the result of Christ’s death and resurrection should be the focal point for all our evangelistic endeavors but in many ways and all too often a “do this” so God can “do that” methodology is followed.

As if the sinner's prayer only works through our good works.

Salvation becomes a “do” message rather than a “done” message, partly because we have such a hard time accepting the saturation of grace poured over us from the fountain at the cross. Instead we sit at the fountain at Bethesda waiting for another encounter with Jesus at our next revival meeting.

So… How do we reach others, the saved and unsaved, with the truth of God's amazing radical grace?

God is the initiator of salvation, not us. God devised the plan, God provided the sacrifice, God first loved us, God is the initiator of our salvation.

At the baptism of Jesus, John announces that one greater than he was coming, who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. John clearly knew that Jesus was this coming one, the one greater than he. The Gospel of John tells us that John the Baptist was told that the one on whom the Spirit would descend would be the one who would baptize people with the Holy Spirit--He would be the Son of God; He would be the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world John 1:29-34.

God is the initiator of salvation, not us. God devised the plan, God provided the sacrifice, God first loved us, God is the initiator of our salvation.

God acts first, always.

More Than Enough

This story does so much to identify the point of view of many religiously minded Christian when it comes to their salvation.

In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.

Can we declare victory over sin through Jesus and finally come out of the jungle? Can we finally realize that we have nothing in and of ourselves to offer God? No amount of effort or blind obedience brings victory. It is not by our dedication to religious traditions that saves us. We are saved by grace through faith.

It’s been nearly 500 years since a monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther took his bold action on Oct. 31, 1517, putting into motion a change that would rock the church as it was then and change its face forever.

Yet some still choose to live in a religious jungle oblivious to the victorious truth of Gods amazing grace.

If that’s you today let me encourage you to find a church that teaches the finished work of the cross and break free from a daily diet of coconuts and bananas.

"You'll never know what is enough until you know what's more than enough" William Blake.

God’s grace is more than enough!

Got Acedia? Who Cares?

Well, recently I’ve been able to put a title on what appears to be one of my most “favorite” sins.

Acedia is not a household word, unless your "house" happens to be a monastery or a department of medieval literature. At its Greek root, Acedia means the absence of care, and in personal terms it means refusing to care, even that you can't care. It is a supreme form of indifference, a kind of spiritual morphine: you know the pain is there, but can't rouse yourself to give a shit. In the mid-twentieth century Aldous Huxley called Acedia the primary affliction of his age, and its baleful influence still sours our relationships to society, politics, and our families. But how can this be, you may ask, when "Acedia" is such an obscure term? Well, as any reader of fairy tales can tell you, it's the devil you don't know that causes the most serious trouble.

When I first encountered the concept of Acedia (pronounced uh-SEE-Dee-uh) in a teaching from Steve Alessi Brown, Keys To Life Ministry. I was startled to find him describing something I had long experienced but had never been able to name. It was all there: Acedia manifesting as both as boredom and restlessness, inertia and workaholism, as well as reluctance to commit to a particular place because of a nagging sense that something better might come along. Another group of people -- surely not the lot I was stuck with now, my family or co-workers -- might value me more highly and help me better fulfill my potential.

The early Christian monks regarded Acedia as one of the worst of the eight "bad thoughts" that afflicted them. It was ranked with pride and anger, as all three have the potential to lead people into deep despair.

Acedia in particular could shake the very foundations of monastic life: once a monk succumbed to the notion that his efforts at daily prayer and contemplation were futile, life loomed like a prison sentence, day after day of nothingness. In a similar way, Acedia can make a once-treasured marriage or vocation seem oppressive and meaningless.

Western culture lost the word Acedia because the monks' subtle psychology of the bad thoughts was eventually solidified into the Church's doctrine of the seven deadly sins. What the monks had recognized as temptations that all people are subject to became seen as specific acts or omissions, and as Acedia was not easily characterized as either, it was transformed into the sin of sloth, which came to signify physical laziness rather than a more serious spiritual indifference.

But the word Acedia (also called the noonday demon) has persisted, coming and going from the English language over the centuries. It was most recently reinstated, after being marked obsolete, in the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary that appeared after the Second World War. Language has a logic and wisdom all its own, and I am now convinced that the word returned to us because we needed it again.
We need to understand Acedia because we all suffer from its effects.

Acedia is “kind of” the opposite of grace. With grace we find that God has provided, in Christ, all we need for salvation both here on earth as well as eternity. The irony I’ve found is that even though Philippians 4:3 clearly states that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” I, simply do not find myself doing “all things”. In fact, I all to often find myself looking to do less things!

And this, is sinful, and it is deadly.

Acedia steals our joy, our sense of belonging, our willingness to do more. We become spiritually depressed while our hearts ache for that “born again” joy we once possessed.

Much like depression we are unaware of our condition. We love God; we’re just to tired to seek Him. We just want to coast, float with the tide of spiritual complacency accepting whatever we bump into as we drift ideally along.

Acedia has found its home in the churches of America. In the unknowing hearts of its Pastors and the members of congregations; it knows no limits, has no favorites, and cares nothing for its hosts. It is a nameless, unknown, dangerous sin.
Until we, you and I, come to understand this sinful condition. This condition that has plagued God’s people for hundreds upon hundreds of years it will continue to thrive unnoticed and undefeated.

What can we do about Acedia and more importantly how do we defeat it?
The answer is the often overstated practice of repentance. But before we can repent of the sin of Acedia we must relearn what repentance actually is. In the New Testament the word translated as 'repentance' is the Greek word metanoia, "after/behind one's mind", which is a compound word of the preposition 'meta' (after, with), and the verb 'noeo' (to perceive, to think, the result of perceiving or observing). In this compound word the preposition combines the two meanings of time and change, which may be denoted by 'after' and 'different'; so that the whole compound means: 'to think differently after'.

Methane is therefore primarily an afterthought, different from the former thought; a change of mind accompanied by regret and change of conduct, "change of mind and heart", or, "change of consciousness".

Now, this definitive truth , at first glance, seems pretty much the same thing we’ve always been taught, “Repentance is to ‘turn from your sin’, to stop the sinful behavior and move on up to a “deluxe apartment in the sky.” But the idea of our being able to simply “turn from” our sin foolishly suggests that we (somehow) have the ability to stop committing not simple this sin, but every sin. We just need to repent.

Why then do we need Jesus? Why, in John 1:29 is Jesus proclaimed the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world?” We have somehow gotten the reality of repentance all messed up. Because we were placed in right standing before the Father through the sacrifice of Jesus we can now go boldly to God and acknowledge our sin. We can then allow God to change us, for His purpose, in His timing.

Our idea that we can simply repent, and stop sinning is way above our pay scale. Our job is to go to the throne and thank God for Jesus and all that He accomplished in and for us. The “change of conduct” comes from God and God alone.

Now that you understand Acedia, what it is, how it works, and where it comes from you can walk in victory each and every time the “noon day devil” decides to meddle in your life.

That’s the power of Grace and the good news of the Gospel.

Amen!!

Knocked Out Again!!

Well, there it is again. There's that punch in the face I never see coming. Just when I'm reasonably sure that I've come to the place where I understand His grace and the purpose for His grace, I wake up shaking my head to get the cob webs out. Imagine teaching others to understand that righteousness is not earned through good works and not seeing the right hook of THAT form of self-righteousness! I'd actually become quite pleased with myself and my "understanding" of His grace. Well until I read your sermon that is!

Well, maybe, just maybe, because of this recent sucker punch I'll learn to duck the next time. But I'm reasonably pretty sure I'll find myself shaking my head many more times. But It's worth it, its so worth it. Oh and I will be borrowing a portion of this teaching so that those who visit my blog and my teaching on FB will hopefully learn to duck once or twice as well. I will, of course, give you all the credit...not that I have to, they already know I'm not this far along.

Luke 18: 9-14

From Pastor Nadia Botz-Weber - House for All Sinners and Saints Church, an ELCA mission church in Denver, Colorado

It is as though this parable is a trap and the bait for this trap is our desire to figure out the moral of the story. Because as soon as we reach for that delicious little one inch square piece of cheddar convinced the point of the parable is that to be really righteous, to be really good in the eyes of others and in the eyes of God is to be humble, then we find the jaws of this parable snap around us because the very next thing out of our mouths can only be: Thank you God that I am humble like the Tax collector and not a bragger like this Pharisee. Trapped.

Or in the words of Homer Simpson, D’uh!

Because the problem with always looking for the moral of the story in Jesus’ parables and especially in this parable: is that I start to assume the moral of the story will lead me to the virtue I can adopt to be righteous. And what is righteousness but movement from vice to virtue?

But the text says nothing of the tax collector moving from vice to virtue…the text mentions nothing of repentance or self-improvement. The text does nothing to uphold any of our cherished notions of who is righteous.

Which means that the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the Tax collector is perhaps not a morality tale after all, but is meant to highlight the un-fair and totally baffling grace of a God who seems entirely unimpressed by our virtue. If there is some kind of promise here then it’s not that we can use our humility to become righteous before God, the promise is not in what the ones hearing the parable can do to become justified. The promise is in the one telling the parable….the promise for us is Christ. Meaning that, there is a solution to the problem of the Great Human Competition Extravaganza that we are continually engaged in. There is a solution to the endless one-up-mans ship that we are continually engaged in. There is a solution to self-righteousness but it’s not trying to be more humble. The solution was for God to be made flesh and walk among us, God’s own beloved bragging sinners. Because this changes everything. See, Jesus wasn’t a new Moses bringing a better law, or a new religion we’ll never live up to. Jesus isn’t just sitting in heaven waiting to see if we can pull off the impossible and then condemning us for our inevitable failure. Jesus subverts the entire paradigm because, if the Reformation brought us anything it is that this isn’t about a spiritual ladder in which we learn how to move from vice to virtue. This isn’t about moving from the vice of being a tax collector to the virtue of being righteous as we might think. But it’s also not about moving from the vice of being self-righteous to the virtue of being humble. This Christianity thing is not about moving from vice to virtue. If anything we move from virtue to Christ. This means that Christ and not ourselves is the source of our righteousness. The righteousness we do have is not our own, but that of a Merciful and gracious God who comes to us in vulnerability and suffering of all things. And the thing is….when our righteousness is not our own but is that of Christ, there is no extra credit to be obtained. There is no basis on which to compare ourselves to each other because what qualifies us to receive this grace is not our virtue, but our need. And we are all equal in our need.
It’s all pretty offensive really. The fact that God loves me as I am right now and not just as I could be if I only got everything right seems foolish. My ego holds out for a me-based solution that I can either boast about or despair in. But the solution isn’t me-shaped. It’s cruciform.

So in the end, humility is not a virtue that makes us righteous. But it’s not unimportant either, because humility is just admitting the truth of being human…humility is the naked state in which we stand before a righteous God who sees us as we are – sees every jealous inclination, every racist thought, every selfish desire every good deed done for the wrong reason and God sees all of it through the lens of the cross and says to us you are free. Free from all of it. No one is keeping score. You are already justified, You are already righteous. You are already God’s new creation.

So, brothers and sisters, You do stand in righteousness before your God, not due to your virtue, but due to the cross. Only a God who slips into skin taking on flesh in all it’s broken glory – only this God of foolish love who dies a scandalous death without even lifting a finger to condemn the enemy – only this God can love you where you are. Right now. Because in the world according to God that’s how things work. Tax Collectors are justified, the last are first the first are last, our virtues become vices and our need of all things, our need becomes our greatest asset. Amen.

God Helps Those Who Help Themselves….NOT!!

“Jesus can help you achieve your dreams.”
“He’ll go ninety-nine yards if you just go one.”
“Do a little and He’ll do a lot.”
“God helps those who help themselves.”

“Desert Pete” is an old song about a man crawling through the desert, dying of thirst, who comes upon a decrepit old water pump. Next to the pump he finds a bottle of water. There’s a note. The note next to the bottle says that he has to use the water to prime the pump before he can drink any.

That sounds like a lot of preaching these days. “Do for God and then He’ll do for you”, “Do your best and then God will do the rest.”
Remember Joshua? You remember this story, don’t you?

Joshua 6: 1-7 “Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.” So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.” And he ordered the army, “Advance! March around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the Lord.”

The people of Jericho built huge walls around their city because they wanted to protect themselves from this “God” they had heard so much about—a God who split the Red Sea in half for his people. God’s big plan was to have Joshua’s army walk around the city for six days and then on the seventh day, walk around the city seven times concluding with a huge shout from God’s people. When the walls of Jericho “come tumbling down, it “seems” as though Joshua’s faithfulness is being rewarded.

We read the story (and hear the sermons) and make this whole account about Joshua and how he bravely fought the battle of Jericho and how as a result of his great faith, the walls came tumbling down. And then we turn it into nothing more than a moral lesson: “If we, like Joshua, have great faith and bravely fight the battles in our lives, we will see our personal walls of sin come tumbling down and enter into the Promised Land of spiritual maturity.”

We’d better not start marching just yet because when we read the story of Joshua this way, we demonstrate that we’ve completely missed the purpose of the story.

Joshua 6:2 “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.”

The key point is that God hands Jericho over to Joshua BEFORE Joshua does what God wants! We expect God to say something more like, “If you do this crazy thing—if you prove your faith to me—I’ll reward your faithfulness by being faithful in return.” But in God’s economy, his promise ALWAYS precedes our faith! In fact, his promise CAUSES our faith. So, as it turns out, this story completely breaks down all “works” based religion. It’s like a wrecking ball. God’s economy is…you get before you give!

God’s word is creative (his words “let there be light” actually create light): when he calls someone “faithful” they become so. When He declares someone “righteous,” THEY ARE RIGHTEOUS. God makes His pronouncements at the BEGINNING, before any improvement or qualification occurs—before any conditions are met. God decided the outcome of Joshua’s battle before anyone strapped on a shield or picked up a sword. And He not only decides to deliver unconditionally; He does so without our help! No one lifts a finger to dismantle the wall—the promised victory is RECEIVED, not ACHIEVED!

Joshua did NOT fight the Battle of Jericho. God did. Joshua and the Israelites simply received the victory that God secured.

Now, if you are able to comprehend all of that…check this out!
This Jericho battle points us to another battle that God unconditionally and singlehandedly fought for us. It points us to another victory that God achieves and that we receive. We are the ones trapped inside the fortified walls of sin and death—of fear and anxiety and insecurity and self-salvation—and Jesus’ “It is finished” shout from the cross alone causes the walls of our self-induced slavery to come tumbling down.

Real freedom, in other words, comes as a result of His performance, not ours; His accomplishment, not ours; His strength, not ours; His victory, not ours.

No More Good Little Christians

As long as Christians postpone the power, of or even worse, as long as Christians refuse to have an opinion of grace, pro or con our indecision will create more problems than it solves. Indecision means growing stops until we stop being indecisive. With the paralysis of analysis, the human spirit begins to sleep. Eventually, like awakening from a bad dream that we’re not quite sure was real, we wake up with the false awareness of our resistance to grace and the refusal to allow God’s love to make us who we really are. This brings a us to a sense of spiritual oppression. We become trapped in our works.

Our lives become fragmented, inconsistent, lacking in harmony and out of sync. The worm turns. The felt security of staying in a familiar place vanishes. We are caught between a rock and hard place.

How do we resolve this problem? We don’t, or even more true…we can’t! We cannot will ourselves to accept grace. There are no magic words, preset formulas, or esoteric rites of passage. Only Jesus Christ sets us free from indecision. The Scriptures offer no other basis for conversion than the personal magnetism of Jesus.

One morning, mysteriously moved by grace, a young man decides to try prayer. For five minutes he agrees to show up and shut up. And Jesus whispers, “Now is the time! The unreal world of Gucci loafers, Ipads, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and smart 3-D television, and the Super Bowl is passing away. Now is the time to stop running around frantically in four directions at once and quietly remember that only one thing is necessary. Now is the time for personal decision and creative response to My word.”

Let Me tell you a little story. One year a rich fool had a bonanza crop and made provisions for an even bigger one the following year. He said to himself, “You’re a good ol’ boy. You’ve worked hard, you deserve everything that’s coming to you, you need a nest egg for the future. Take it easy, eat heartily, drink up a storm, and have a good time.” That night my Father shattered his security: “Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, who is going to enjoy it now?”

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is importantly essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

Our response to the love of Jesus demands our trust. Do we rely on our résumé or the gospel of grace? How do we cope with failure? Grace tells us that we are accepted just as we are. We may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God, held in his hands. Such is his promise to us in Jesus Christ, a promise we can trust.

It’s not at all about what we’ve done. It’s all about what He did for us.

His grace is sufficient.

No Hope

What if God isn't so difficult to understand?
What if God is communicating with us every single moment of the day and night? What if we lost sight of this communication? What if God’s communication were replaced by our own useless perception?
What if we stopped viewing the cross only as our ticket into heaven and began to see it for what it really is?
What if we began to see God in everything we see?
What if we truly understood what the cross really represents?

Is it just our “Get out of hell free card?’ Or is it more?
Does it represent God from a different viewpoint?
Is it God reaching toward us?
Is it God allowing us to see that we are helpless, alone, and unworthy without Him?

What is we understood to late that it is His cross and not ours?
What if God removed His cross?
What if we woke up one morning and knew not only that we had no possible way to find forgiveness on your own but we suddenly realized with our first days breath that the only opportunity we had for forgiveness was gone?

What would we do?
Would we hopelessly search for a “new” way?
Would we cry out to God in anger, raise your fist to the sky and shout…”You put my cross back, you but it back right now!!!”
Would we give up?
Would we simply give up?
What if God took our hope away?
Would we then see the value in His cross when it no longer existed?
Would we understand grace then?
Would we still call it cheap?